The Only One
by Clearly Odd
Summary: Charles is nine the first time it happens, and he thinks he's dreaming. He wakes from a dead sleep, confused and… and hearing voices.


Charles is nine the first time it happens, and he thinks he's dreaming. He wakes from a dead sleep, confused and… and hearing voices. Whispers. He wonders if, maybe, his parents are out in the hallway, discussing something in the middle of the night for some reason.

He slips out of bed and pokes his head out into the hallway, but sees no one. Nothing.

The whispers have faded, though, and Charles returns to bed.

-/-/-

When it happens again, perhaps a week later, the whispers don't fade as Charles wakes. They remain, a cacophonous hiss filling his mind as he glances wildly around his room, searching desperately for their source. He can pick out words, here and there, _please_, and _mother_, and _tired_, and _love_, and _hate_, merely murmurs above the low level of jumbled voices.

Charles huddles in bed and holds his hands to his ears. It doesn't help; the voices don't seem to be coming from an outside source. They seem to be resonating inside his head.

He doesn't go back to sleep, and one of the maids finds him there still in the morning, hunched against the wall, clutching his head, covering his ears and waiting for the whispers to abate. "Young Master Xavier?" She ventures quietly, failing to call his attention.

"Charles?" She tries again, as he has often begged off the formal titles which would be more customary from the staff.

Charles starts, and this distraction proves enough to jolt the other voices away. "Are you alright, dear?" The maid asks.

Charles is not, but he nods. "Just. A headache." He mumbles.

The maid reaches forward and places a hand on his forehead. "You're a bit warm. Maybe you should go back to bed; I'll let your parents know you aren't feeling well."

"No," Charles shakes his head, "No, thank you. I'll be fine."

Charles doesn't know what's going on, but he knows that going back to sleep certainly isn't an option.

-/-/-

With the same conviction every young child has that they will be able to stay awake long enough to catch Santa Clause in the act, Charles settles himself at his desk the next night, ready to wait the whole thing out. If the voices only come when he sleeps, then he simply won't sleep. Then perhaps, like a virus, the whispering will go away with time.

He makes an admirable go of it, settling in to read through one of his textbooks—biology, his favorite—but has dropped off with his head pillowed on the pages by one in the morning. The voices wake him before his alarm.

-/-/-

It carries on like this for a week, and Charles can honestly say he has never had a more miserable week in his nine years of life. He sleeps barely four or five hours a night, fitfully, beginning to dream of things he's never seen and places he's never been and people he's never met. His father's study, though extensive, holds little on the subject of psychology. Brian Xavier is a physicist, a man of hard science, not a soft science like matters of the mind.

Charles isn't sure how long he can carry on at this pace. He is beginning to look ill from lack of sleep, and even his mother notices. The cook offers him extra helpings and treats when he ventures by the kitchen, but his appetite has all but gone. His head aches constantly, though from the noise or from the strain of trying to keep it out, he couldn't say.

Some days, Charles manages to distract himself enough that he can't hear anything anymore. Some days he plays records as loudly as he can get away with and drowns out every other noise. Some days he gives up and listens to the phrases float through his head. _Are you okay?_ _Come home. I love you. Get away. Where are you? What are you doing? I hate you. I hope you're safe._

The voices are never the same, but the loudest strains of them all seem to be fraught with strong emotion.

-/-/-

Going into town proves to be a disaster.

Charles is miles ahead of his peers in school and his parents have long since hired a tutor to suit the pace of his learning. The staff does most of the shopping and while Brian and Sharon Xavier are fairly sociable, many of their outings are to places where children are not welcome, and so Charles does not find occasion to leave the estate often.

It's Saturday evening, though, and his parents have noticed how terribly on-edge their son has been for the past week, and hoped perhaps spending some time out with him might help. Sharon teased about her boys getting wrapped up in their studies and how she needed to get them out of the house, and Brian placed a warm hand on his son's shoulder and told him they were going out to see a show. The three of them, as a family.

And, really, the idea sounds delightful. Wonderful. Despite the encroaching voices and the stress of the past week, Charles felt quite happy to be going out on the town with his parents.

Which was, perhaps, what made the evening such a disappointment overall.

They piled into one of the family cars and headed off the estate, towards town, and that was when the trouble started. The whispers, the sounds Charles was almost beginning to accept as part of his personal background noise, grew louder. Each whisper gained voice, and as they drew nearer to the population of the city, each voice gained volume.

There were hundreds of them, vying for Charles's attention, stinging in his ears and tugging at his scalp. He clapped his hands over his ears but it did no good. The voices, the noises, those terrible, loud, shouting, shrilling voices, were inside his head, consuming him and his thoughts and it hurt and it hurt and it _hurt_.

Charles wasn't sure what happened, but when he opens his eyes, he is in his own bed. His throat fees raw and his head aches like he's been banging it against something. Or like something has been banging against it. Perhaps both.

"He just… he started clutching his head and screaming." Charles could hear his mother's distressed tones in the hallway.

"Scared me so badly I nearly ran off the road…" His father put in, sounding just as confused, as concerned, "I stopped the car, of course, and we tried to find out what was wrong, but he was in… some kind of fit."

"I don't think he could hear us at all." His mother continues quietly, "He was just… screaming. As though he were in pain. And then he fainted clean away."

Well that explained the roughness of his throat. There is another man talking now, his voice a bit hazier and Charles strains to listen. "And you say he's seemed ill for the past week?"

"Not outright, perhaps, but… pale. He looks like he hasn't been sleeping. He's lost his appetite. That sort of thing." His mother recounts.

Charles would guess that there's more to the conversation, but he's so tired that he drifts off before he can hear the rest of it. It never occurs to him that, perhaps, his parents are not conversing with this man just outside his room, but in his father's study all the way down the hall.

-/-/-

There are tests done. Blood drawn and so forth. The doctors and nurses never bother to tell Charles what they're testing for, but they all look terribly grim under their pasted-on expressions of cheer. Whatever it is, Charles knows they fear the worst. He resigns himself to the fate the blood tests designate him.

Except, they don't find a thing. Not a single thing wrong with him. Finally, the doctor diagnoses him with migraines, offers his parents a prescription for them, and no more is said about it.

After that, though the voices never reach quite the crescendo they did that one night, they do continue to make themselves heard. Charles worries over them, but doesn't say a word. People who hear voices are mad, and he'd rather be mad and in his own home than mad and in an asylum, he thinks.

And so he learns to tone the voices down a bit. They're always there, always whispering behind his eyes, but they're bearable. Even when they venture into town again, there is no screaming, only loud conversing. It gives Charles a headache, for which he supposes he could take his medication (his mother is always asking after his migraines, telling him to take his medication) but somehow he never does.

He learns to live with it.

-/-/-

Brian Xavier dies when Charles is 10.

It has been maybe a year since the voices manifested and Charles was feeling that he was coping with them quite well. Though when he went out, they would still ramp up to a dull roar, they were almost silent when he was at the estate.

Every carefully constructed barrier Charles has made for himself comes crashing down when he learns of the accident at his father's lab, and everything else in Charles's world comes crashing down shortly thereafter.

As distant as his mother had been before, she can't seem to bear his presence any longer. Before, Charles had always felt loved by her, if not always in the way he'd seen other children loved by their mothers. Now, all he felt coming from her was a sorrowful sort of resentment whenever they happened to be in the same room. He has the distinct feeling, though he can't say why, that his mother can't stand how very much he reminds her of Brian.

Kurt Marko soon moves into the Xavier estate, an oppressive and menacing presence that Charles cannot puzzle out. Kurt says he is there to help them through this difficult time, but there are waves of… something else coming off his person. Charles can't explain the feeling anymore than he can explain the voices in his head and supposes he probably truly has gone mad. After all, Kurt was his father's partner in work and had been a friend of the family for years. No matter the inexplicable feelings of _greedwantneed_ Charles caught whenever he was around Kurt, Charles felt he had to be in the wrong.

Cain, of course, followed Kurt, and now, on top of his now constant migraines and constant failed attempts at keeping away both the omnipresent voices and what seemed to mere feelings or ideas, Charles found himself on the receiving end of vicious verbal barbs from Cain. While Charles was more than capable of keeping up with Cain—rather, running verbal circles around the other boy—he found things only became worse when he fought back.

Instead, he holes himself up in his room and works to carefully reconstruct what he can of the barriers he has lost.

-/-/-

When Charles is 11, Kurt Marko becomes his stepfather, and Cain his stepbrother.

There was a brief period of peace following the wedding of Kurt Marko and Sharon Xavier (Sharon Marko, now, Charles supposes, though he intends on keeping the name Xavier). The honeymoon period, Charles reflects ruefully, could not last forever, though. Her new union brought Sharon more guilt than comfort and she sank into an alcoholic haze that Charles found hard to penetrate.

Kurt's life only seems improved, however. He has access to the extensive funds of the Xavier house (and Charles was beginning to doubt if he really was mad now that his initial vague impressions of Kurt's greed have been confirmed, and just what was he supposed to do with that information?) and he has brilliant Charles for a son. Charles, brilliant Charles, who he seems to prefer to his own son.

Cain's verbal abuse becomes verbal threats, and threats are acted upon in an attempt to release the frustration Cain felt. Charles could tell the beatings never help bring Cain peace, and each subsequent visit from his stepbrother only leaves them both aching and more broken than before.

The attention Kurt lavishes on Charles makes him uncomfortable, and he avoids the man as much as possible. The attention Charles wants from his mother makes Sharon uncomfortable, and she avoids her son as much as possible. The attention Cain craves from his father never comes and he seeks to vent his anger on Charles as much as possible.

Thus, Charles spends as much time as possible locked up in his room, thinking, for lack of anything better, of the voices in his head. They seem less of a plague now that he's grown used to them. In fact, as he learns to tune them out, their presence is neither oppressive nor unsettling; it is almost a comfort. If he tries, Charles finds he can even focus just on one whisper, and listen to what it tells him.

It's never anything interesting; strains of gossip involving names he doesn't recognize, lists of chores, ingredients to a recipe, and so on. Charles wonders what it all means.

-/-/-

When Charles is 12, he realizes two things.

The realizations came simultaneously and are so startling as to bring tears to his eyes.

Barely a week past his twelfth birthday, Charles finds himself alone with his mother in the dining room. It's such a rare occurrence that Charles could have his mother to himself, but Kurt has ducked out early on business and Cain was nowhere yet to be found and now Charles is watching his mother hopefully across the table as she peruses the paper and he munches on toast slathered liberally with marmalade. "Mother?" He breaks the silence as she flips a page, waiting for her to look up at him.

She doesn't. "Yes, darling?" She answers in the distracted manner she seems prone to these days.

"My birthday was last week…" Charles continues carefully, picking at the crust of his toast.

Finally, that warrants a look. A smile, even. "Yes, dear. 12 years old. Before I know it, you'll be off at university, changing the world, won't you?" Her voice is fond and empty in equal measures.

"I had just been thinking… before Father died, we always went out on my birthday. Even if it was just to… to do something as silly as get ice cream. I thought it would be nice if we," Charles pauses, feeling the need to clarify, "If you and I could go out and do something like that."

Sharon's smile fades. "I'm sorry, darling, I'm simply too busy today. I've all sorts of things to do, and…"

"Not today, then. Tomorrow?" Charles cuts in hopefully.

"Charles…"

"Or the day after that?" Charles is practically begging now.

Sharon is silent for a moment. She purses her lips. "We'll see, Charles."

And Charles can't stand it anymore. "Why won't you spend time with me anymore?" He asks, his voice turning the accusation into a plea, "I miss Father, too, but I also miss you and I don't… I don't understand!"

Sharon looks across the table at him, sadder than Charles has seen her in a long time and, without opening her mouth, he hears her say, "_I can't stand to be around you anymore_."

"What?" Charles chokes.

"What?" Sharon parrots, looking panicked, "I didn't say anything Charles, I…"

"You said… you said you couldn't stand to be around me anymore."

"No, I… I didn't say that, I," Sharon places a hand over her mouth, murmuring around her fingers, "I don't think I did."

And Charles realizes she is right. She hadn't said it, not aloud, but he had heard it just the same. And two thoughts hit him in the same instant, equally devastating and relieving.

The voices aren't in _his_ head. They're in everyone else's. The realization that, no, he has not gone insane brings tears of pure relief to his eyes.

The ensuing realization that the words he had heard did belong to his mother, that his mother can't stand him, takes his relief and replaces it with despair, and sets the tears rolling down his face. He stands up and leaves the room.

He can't tell if his mother's voice, calling him back, is echoing in his mind or in the empty dining room.

-/-/-

Charles has wasted nearly three years attempting to push the voices out, drown them, quiet them, quash everything to do with them. Now that he realizes it isn't a mental illness, but a gift, he stops trying to stymie his abilities, and they grow in leaps and bounds.

He finds that it is far less overwhelming to simply focus on one voice than to try and block them all out. Following the strand of thoughts back to a single person finds all the other whispers fading away completely. Charles amuses and fascinates himself with this trick for weeks. He listens to the cook's orderly thoughts about the menu for the week, the gardener's jumbled tangents about the grounds and the trite plotlines of the romance novels he'd gotten himself hooked on after his wife left him, the secrets the maids learned when people thought no one was around to listen. He learns a few things about the staff he would have preferred not to; one of the maids is stealing silverware (Charles can't bring himself to care), one of the gardeners had once posed nude for a magazine (and while Charles was sure Mrs. Baines had been lovely in her youth, he doesn't want to think about the aging gardener in any state of undress), and the butler is having a tryst with Charles's tutor, James (fascinating though this information is, as Charles has never considered a romantic relationship between two people of the same gender before, he had been absolutely too embarrassed to investigate the matter further).

When matters of the mansion become a bit boring and Charles figures he has plumbed all the secrets the staff has to offer—never does he dare enter into the minds of his family, not after that first disastrous realization—he turns his powers to the people in town, wondering if he can even reach so far. He can, as it turns out, focus on the individual thoughts of people at the edges of the city, but the voices are faint and it always leaves him with a lingering headache. He decides to leave that exercise alone for the time being.

-/-/-

Hearing thoughts is well enough, and could probably come in useful one day, but Charles begins to wonder if that's the only ability his gift affords him. Perhaps, if he can hear other people's thoughts, they can hear his as well? It's certainly worth a try, he decides.

He tries it on one of the maids one afternoon. It's just a simple request, one he hopes will sound like something he said aloud but will prove that he can project his thoughts into the minds of others. He seeks out the maid's mind—Helen is her name and she is currently thinking about how many chores she has left to do—and carefully tries to place his own voice in with hers. _Will you bring me a glass of water, please?_

The effect is… not what he expected.

Helen cries out, doubling over and clutching her head. The duster she had been using is on the floor and Charles is on his feet beside her, praying to anyone or anything that he hadn't just irreparably damaged this woman. "Helen? Helen, are you alright?" He asks, not daring to reach out and place a hand on her, lest he cause further damage.

The woman's breathing begins to even out again and she straightens up carefully. "I… Yes, I think so. I-I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me I just…" She pauses, her eyes darting this way and that as though she is chasing after something scattered, "I don't know. I had this sudden pain in my head… had some thought about water? It sounds silly now, and the pain is a bit less…"

Charles wants to reach out and place a comforting hand on Helen's arm, reassure her that she's fine, it was his fault, but that would involve messy explanations and he finds his hand hovering a few inches above hers, unnoticed in her daze. "Why… Uh, why don't you take the rest of the day off, you're almost done with your chores, anyway," Whoops, he wasn't supposed to know that, "I'll tell Kurt you're ill. Just get some rest. It'll be okay."

Helen smiles thinly at him. "You're a good boy, sweetheart. Worth the whole lot of them." She pats him on the shoulder in a moment of familiarity she certainly wouldn't have allowed were her employers in the room, then bends down to pick up her abandoned duster, "Thank you, Charles, I think I will go and… lie down a bit."

She leaves the room and Charles feels a bit like crying.

-/-/-

Charles doesn't use his powers at all after that. Not for weeks. He goes back to shushing the voices and keeping such tight reigns on his own thoughts he wonders if he truly has any at all anymore. Mr. Todd—James, that is, Charles's tutor, who was still in some kind of relationship with the butler—seems to pick up on Charles's stress one afternoon when the boy fails to respond to even simple questions.

The next morning, when Charles shows up for his lessons, Mr. Todd hasn't unpacked a single book. Instead, he informs Charles that he's had a word with Mrs. Marko (it's still strange to hear her addressed as such, Charles thinks) and that they will be taking a bit of a field trip today. To the fair, no less.

"The fair?" Charles goggles. He's never been near a fair in his life, and isn't entirely sure what one entails. "How on Earth did you manage to get my mother to agree to that?"

"Oh, I put some spin on it about cultural studies, something like that," Mr. Todd waved his hand absently, "I just thought, since we'd been working so hard at your studies, it might be nice to take a break."

The man looks hopeful behind his round spectacles and Charles really isn't certain what he's being presented with, here. Mr. Todd has always been kind to Charles, a good tutor and a generally friendly presence in a house that was no longer Charles's home, but it was hard not to be suspicious. Why would anyone want to take him to the fair, Charles wondered?

He saw no way around it, and for the first time in almost a month, he lets just a small amount of his power wander out to the man across from him. He catches only bits of thoughts from the man, but enough to understand his intentions.

_Looks ill… needs to get out of the house… parents certainly won't take him anywhere…_

Charles can't be sure if it's kindness or pity that's driving Mr. Todd, but he finds himself in car with his tutor and a chauffeur headed towards the fair that has set up in a field on the other side of town, anyway.

-/-/-

It's been a while since Charles has been plunged into a group of people and he supposes since there are so many around, it wouldn't be too dangerous to let his guard down a little. After all, with so many minds surrounding his, it seems unlikely he could hurt anyone in particular, doesn't it? Charles recognizes the thin rationalization he's making, but lets out a breath and inches his mental walls down anyway.

Despite the immediate influx of voices, he feels almost instantly better. Freer. The minds channel themselves around his own in a comforting, familiar way, and Charles allows himself to be led through the crowd to one attraction after another.

Mr. Todd is hardly making a stab at turning the fair into a learning experience, but he seems to be enjoying allowing Charles to experience the fair for the very first time. Occasionally, he can't help but catch more snatches of thought from the man. Louder bits about how he's glad Charles is enjoying himself. Distant, sadder shreds about how he'll never have children of his own. One, curious line that if he had children, he wouldn't mind having one like Charles.

Charles decides then that Mr. Todd is being kind and they thoroughly enjoy the day. They eat ridiculously greasy food and watch the loud side shows and play games that Mr. Todd warns Charles are rigged, but lets him try his hand at anyway. It isn't until they're preparing to leave and a sign catches Charles's eye that the day begins to take a downturn.

_Lumolt the Amazing! Mind-Reader Extraordinaire!_ The sign proclaims in chipped gold lettering.

This, of course, excites Charles like nothing else has in ages. A _mind-reader!_ Why had he never considered there might be others? He could speak to this Amazing Lumolt character and perhaps get some tips on honing his skills. On not hurting people. "A mind-reader?" Mr. Todd comes up behind Charles, looking down at the sign as well, "Charles, surely you know the whole thing is hoax?"

The thought had occurred to Charles, but it also occurred to him that _maybe it wasn't_. "Maybe, Mr. Todd, but still, it's… interesting. Let's go see. Please?" Charles turns his blue eyes on his tutor and, just like it always works on the maids, Mr. Todd shakes his head with fond exasperation and holds the tent flap aside so Charles can enter.

They sit down in the very front row upon Charles's insistence and a scant few other people file into the seats behind them. Charles can scarcely contain his anticipation as the show begins and he wonders briefly if some of it is spilling out, because now Mr. Todd seems a little more excited, too. There's no time to think about it, though, because after an exaggerated introduction, Lumolt the Amazing is asking for a volunteer from the audience and Charles's hand is up like a shot. A chance to actually _talk_ to the man! It's perfect, Charles thinks.

Lumolt the Amazing doesn't seem to agree, however, as he chooses a young man from the row just behind Charles. Charles sags in disappointment for a moment, but it's no matter. If the man can read minds, surely he'll be able to hear Charles from such a short distance. He lowers his guards completely and, careful not to project his thoughts into anyone's mind, lets his mental voice ring out.

_I'm here! I'm like you! I'd like to talk to you!_

There is no reaction from the so-called amazing Lumolt. Not even a twitch. He is too busy placing two fingers on his temple and staring intently at the young man he has chosen from the crowd.

Is that something he's supposed to do? Charles wonders. He tests it out, placing his fingers covertly on his temple and focusing on Lumolt the Amazing. It does, much to Charles's dismay, increase his focus a bit. And he hears everything.

He hears Lumolt's (Gerard's, actually) lines running through his head, practiced and showy. He hears the young man thinking idly of appearing awestruck for the crowd, but his thoughts in no way match up the other man's on the stage. There is absolutely no mind reading going on up there.

A fake, Charles realizes. Just a fake.

Charles stands and leaves the tent abruptly, with Mr. Todd running to catch up with him.

-/-/-

Charles feels foolish. He is utterly embarrassed that he was taken in by a fake sideshow act. He is angry that the man would dare fake what had been plaguing Charles for years. He is disappointed that his chance to learn more about himself was taken away.

More than anything, though, he suddenly feels acutely lonely. Even as Mr. Todd sits next to him and tries to work out what caused Charles's sudden sour mood, Charles realizes there is a possibility that he is completely alone. That he is simply some kind of genetic aberration and there is no one else like him.

"Charles… I'm not sure what upset you, but I wish you would tell me." Mr. Todd sighs.

Charles feels a sudden, implacable spike of anger. James Todd did not understand what it was like to be so very, very alone and to have to hide the way Charles did. Not at all. And Charles certainly wasn't going to explain it to him. "Just… Leave me alone, please." Charles mutters.

"Charles…" The man tries again.

"I said, _leave me alone!_" Charles snaps, putting the force of all his anger behind his words.

And Mr. Todd does leave him alone. He turns away from Charles completely, looking out the window instead.

They don't speak for the rest of the drive back to the estate.

-/-/-

By morning, Charles feels rather awful for snapping at his tutor. The man may not have been a mind-reader, but Charles realized that Mr. Todd _did_ know what it was like to have to hide from the world. He hadn't deserved to bear the brunt of Charles's frustration, at any rate, and Charles heads down to his lessons ready to apologize and thank the man for being so kind as to take him out yesterday.

However, instead of the kind, bespectacled face of his teacher, Charles finds Kurt sitting at the desk of the study where Charles's lessons usually take place. "Mr. Todd came to me yesterday after you two returned from your little fieldtrip and informed me that he was quitting." Kurt says without preamble.

"_What_?" Charles chokes.

"Mm. Very unprofessional. No worries, though, lad, we'll find you a new tutor. I'm sure you've outgrown whatever that man could have taught you anyway. You should be starting on much higher grade-level studies." Kurt nods, standing up to clap Charles on the shoulder, "In the meantime, why don't you enjoy a nice day off, eh?"

With that, the man leaves the room, leaving Charles reeling in front of the desk.

He replayed his final conversation with Mr. Todd over again in his mind.

_Leave me alone!_

Charles sagged onto the floor, curling his arms around his legs and putting his forehead to his knees. What had he done?

-/-/-

Charles briefly thinks that he could fix this. He could find Mr. Todd's address in his parents' papers somewhere. He could lift it from their minds if he had to.

And then he could go to Mr. Todd and- and what, exactly? Charles didn't even know what he had done, much less how to _undo_ it. And besides that, it was unlikely that Kurt would take Mr. Todd back onto staff after his abrupt departure.

There is nothing in his mind after Charles shakes the idea off as undoable. Nothing but regret and anger and sadness and the desperate wish that he could fix what he had done without even realizing it.

-/-/-

It was months again before Charles managed to bring himself around.

He isn't sure why it happens. He has spent the past four months or so repressing his powers to his fullest ability, responding to the outside world only as much as is demanded of him. It's utterly wearing and at night Charles still finds his defenses weaken a bit and let in the dreams and thoughts of those around him, but he does his best nonetheless. He really has been trying to be _good_ about it.

So he isn't sure why it happens, but he wakes one morning with a renewed sense of purpose. He is going to be 13 in less than a year and this simply can't go on. It seems as though he's stuck with these powers, this gift or this illness, and if ever hopes to be more than a recluse, he decides he needs to learn to control himself.

Kurt's interests are different than Brian's, and the man's personal library is rife with studies Charles couldn't have dreamed of. Kurt seems to have a vested interest in psychical studies and parapsychology and Charles tears into these books with gusto.

To his disappointment, nothing concrete has ever been proven (at least, nothing that has been published), but if other people believe in it, then Charles is certain he can't be the only person with powers out there.

Mostly certain.

-/-/-

Charles tries, once more, to project his voice into the mind of someone else. The butler, this time, who has been rather despondent since Mr. Todd's departure (and Charles still feels bad about that, he really does). Charles lowers his mental voice to a bare whisper and sends a thought off to the man. _Will you bring me a glass of water, please?_

With triumph, Charles notes that the man does not double over in pain. Instead, he whips around, as though he heard someone whisper in his ear. He sees only Charles, sitting sedately with a book in his lap. "Did you say something, Charles?" The butler asks.

"No." Charles shakes his head.

The butler frowns but returns to his work. Not loud enough, then, Charles decides.

Carefully, he sends a thought towards the butler once more, just a bit louder. _Will you bring me a glass of water, please?_

This time, the butler straightens up and nods. "Of course. I'll be right back."

Charles is grinning from ear to ear when the man returns with a glass of water and the boy tries to pass it off as a smile of gratitude.

It's certainly a start.

-/-/-

Charles has yet to find any definitive evidence of anyone else in the world like him, and it's a bit wearing. Still, he doesn't want to give up hope that he will find others. He spends a great deal of time thinking about what these other people might be like; if there are only other people with mental abilities or if there are people who can do other things. The thoughts keep him up at night, and so it's very easy for him to feel when an unrecognizable mind enters the house through the back kitchen door. His eyes snap open and he snatches the baseball bat Kurt had bought him from his closet before making his way down to the kitchen.

Holding the bat aloft, he pads quietly down the hall, but stops at the kitchen door and drops his weapon. "_Mother_," He says in exasperation, "I thought you were a burglar!"

His mother replies, but something isn't right. He can feel his mother upstairs in her room. This person, whoever it is, looks exactly like his mother, but she certainly doesn't _act_ like his mother. She seems to realize he is not going to follow her entreaties to return to bed and leans down to face him. "I'll make you a hot chocolate." She offers.

No, that was _not_ his mother. "Who _are_ you?" He asks, glancing over at the photograph on the wall, the one in which his mother stands with him, wearing the same dress this imposter is wearing now, and then he demands "And what have you done with my mother?"

The woman takes a startled step towards him and Charles grits his teeth, taking his own step towards the intruder. He enters their mind, speaking just loud enough for it to hurt, letting them know he means business. _My mother has never set foot in this kitchen in her life_, he thinks, watching as the woman places her hands on her head, looking around for the source of the voice, _And she certainly never made me a hot chocolate. Unless you count ordering the maid to do it_.

Finally, the woman has been backed up into the counter and Charles is still advancing. He stops, however, when the familiar face goes slack and… begins to flutter. It startles Charles, but in a moment he is grinning. Almost laughing.

Where the image of his mother was, a small girl with blue skin and scales and frightfully red hair now stands before him. She regards him warily. "You're not… scared of me?" She asks.

Charles shakes his head, still grinning. "I always believed I couldn't be the only one in the world. The only one who was… different."

The girl still seems uncertain, and Charles shifts the bat from his right hand to his left, holding out his right to shake. "Charles Xavier." He introduces himself.

"Raven." The girl takes his hand and barely shakes it before letting go.

Charles's mind is already reeling with possibilities. He isn't alone. He offers Raven food. He tells her he can stay. He quite possibly promises she can stay forever, and she seems delighted.

It doesn't matter. Charles will give her anything if she will stay.

Because he has been alone with the voices in his mind for almost four years and now finally, finally he knows

He isn't the only one.


End file.
